September
by Red River
Summary: Castiel had a fondness for parks. In his favorite park, it was September, before the leaves had begun to change. Sam and Cas friendship story, with time travel.


A/N: Inspired by one of the prompts I didn't use for the Blind Sassy Exchange 2012 on Tumblr. Just a light Sam and Cas-centric story, with a little wistfulness.

Characters/Pairings: Sam and Castiel centric, friendship or or pre-slash.

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Castiel had a fondness for parks. There was a clarity to the sunlight in such places, dappled and scattered through the verdant boughs of the trees, that reminded him of something warm and simple, some edge of perfection that he hadn't encountered in a long time. He liked the gentleness of the breeze and the rough wood of the bench that pressed its grain into his fingertips, marking him for a brief moment with the impression of this place, the reality of his presence here. Parks felt somehow more timeless to Castiel than so many places of human invention, and he liked that as well—he felt less out of place here, a timeless creature himself, than in the high buildings of stone and steel, the little bones of civilizations, so few of which would even last a human lifetime.

Castiel remembered talking to Uriel in a park, before so much—remembered talking to Dean on a bench like this one, watching the children run from swing to swing, race down the slides. But he had never yet sat in a park with Sam—and that was strange, because of all of his companions, he thought Sam might best understand what Castiel felt in these places. He could imagine sharing such an instant with the younger Winchester: sitting beside him on a bench like this and telling him what the sunshine sounded like. Somehow he though Sam would like that.

He could never bring Sam here, though—to his favorite park.

In his favorite park, it was early September, before the leaves had begun to change. The afternoon sunlight was a few hours old, warm with just the undercurrent of an autumn chill, just enough to remind that this day was precious, that the darkness was coming. School was out for the day, and a handful of children scattered across the playground next to Castiel's bench—two little girls in pink jackets giggling down the slide, older boys and girls playing messy basketball on the asphalt court, a little boy in a red turtleneck struggling to reach the monkey bars. Their caretakers, older brothers and sisters and babysitters, were dispersed across the park, jumping in the basketball game or chatting by the four-square court, but Castiel barely saw them—they were muted, almost invisible next to the brightness of the younger children.

The wind rustled in the soft trees and Castiel turned his attention to the boy in red. He looked about four, though he was actually five, small for his age for a few years to come. His floppy hair was dark—hadn't browned yet—and still retained its baby curls, tucked behind his ears. The hand-me-down turtleneck covered half of his hands. He had scrambled up the metal ladder at the base of the monkey bars, and was kneeling on the top rung, one arm wrapped tightly around the support pole while the other reached hopelessly for the monkey bars above him, his face pinched in determination. After a moment, the boy's arm slumped back to his side, and he gazed out across the playground; Castiel followed his eyes to a sandy-haired nine-year-old on the basketball court, laughing as he stole the ball. The little boy in red made a face. Then he pivoted on the ladder of the monkey bars, and like they were drawn together his eyes locked on Castiel's, hazel disarming bright blue. Castiel held his breath.

He had been here so many times. Had inhabited this moment so many times. But the boy had never looked at him before.

With the carelessness of the very young, the boy in red jumped down from the monkey bars and made his way over to Castiel, the gravel crunching under his small tennis shoes. He stopped abruptly a few feet from the bench, suddenly shy, tugging at his black stretch pants. Castiel stayed where he was.

"Hi," the boy said after a moment.

Castiel inclined his head. "Hello."

The boy pushed a hand through his floppy curls—the gesture of an older boy, an older brother. "I saw you here before."

Castiel felt his lips quirking up at the corners. "I have come here many times," he said, leaning forward on the bench and resting his elbows on his knees so that he was closer to the boy's height. He studied the flecks of green in those young, young eyes. "I am waiting for a friend."

"Oh." The boy kicked one shoe in the gravel. "Is he coming soon?"

Castiel exhaled softly and leaned back into the bench. "It may be quite a long time."

"Oh," the boy repeated. Then he smiled, a wide smile that made dimples in his unscarred cheeks. "I'm waiting, too."

"Who are you waiting for?" Castiel asked, though he knew.

"For my dad." Then the boy seemed to regret saying anything, because he bent down and fiddled with a leaf beneath the tip of his shoe, a dried curl of light green, one that had fallen before its time. After a moment he held it up so that it covered one of his eyes, squinting with the other one, just the barest edge of hazel searching out Castiel's blue. "So where's your kids?" the boy asked.

Castiel smiled to himself, at the little conjugation slip, at the question. "Mine are…" He considered the boy in red for a long moment, and then glanced over his head at the long stretch of asphalt, the plastic backboard rocking on its pole. "One of them is playing basketball."

The boy in red stood up straight once more. "My brother too."

Castiel tipped his head to one side. "Why aren't you playing with him?"

The boy made a face. "He says it's big kids only."

"Ah," Castiel said, so softly the sound almost disappeared under the rustle of the trees.

"But I don't care," the boy hurried on, afraid to be misunderstood, or pitied perhaps. "I like the monkey bars." Then his eyes strayed over his shoulder to the bars in question, so unattainably far above his head, and a little frown settled over his lips. Castiel followed his gaze and held back his smile.

"They seem to be very high," he said, keeping his tone neutral.

The boy shrugged under his enormous turtleneck. "Yeah, kinda."

Castiel had never thought about what he would do in this moment—if the little boy in red ever stopped staring wistfully at the basketball court, ever stopped running to his older brother, pleading for help from the edge of the asphalt, and turned to him instead. But somehow the answer seemed so easy that he didn't question it, only folded his hands into each other and looked down into those bright, curious hazel eyes.

"May I lift you up?"

For a moment the boy looked like he would say no, childhood nightmares and the warnings he had been given playing like the flickering shadows of leaves across his young face. But Castiel was not worried. Because this was the boy who would keep his heart open in spite of all the pain and fire waiting for him in the years to come, the boy who forgave things that could not be forgiven—the boy who believed in angels.

"Okay," the boy said.

Castiel rose soundlessly from the bench. They were silent as they crossed the playground, as if shy all over again to be walking in each other's company. They hesitated at the base of the monkey bars. Then the boy turned around and raised his arms, the sweetest gesture of trust from a child, and Castiel gripped him by the waist and lifted him up to the bars, feeling the scrape of the turtleneck on his fingertips as he let go. The boy swung himself down and back, swaying easily between each bar, his tiny fingers secure around the tarnished metal—and when he wavered at the end of the rungs, a little frightened of the ground so far beneath his shoes, Castiel raised his arms and lifted him down again, setting him gently on the gravel.

"Thanks," the boy said, smiling under his floppy curls, his wide hazel eyes. Then the shyness was back—the shyness that Castiel thought was still with him, just a little, just enough to duck his head sometimes when Castiel held his eyes too long—and the boy turned and ran toward the basketball court, the gravel churning beneath his shoes. Halfway there he stopped cold, the way that children could, and turned back to Castiel, and waved once over his head. "I hope your friend comes soon!" Then he was off again, racing toward the sandy-haired boy with freckles across his nose, eager to be with the older children already, to be old enough to be an equal.

Castiel watched him go. He lifted his hand and set it against the frame of the monkey bars, mapped the weld joints and the scratches and the slow rust on the cool metal with fingers that remembered everything. Then he closed his eyes and let time move, and when he opened them again the bars under his hand were bright yellow, a short curve instead of tall right angles, and the gravel beneath his feet had become green foam, patchy with the late afternoon light of October streaming through whistling, golden leaves.

There were footsteps at his back, so much softer on foam than on gravel. And then a voice.

"Cas?"

Castiel let his hand drift from the yellow bars of the playground structure to rest at his side once more. He turned far enough to look over his shoulder, to meet much older hazel eyes above a brown pullover—because he didn't wear red anymore, when he could help it.

"Hello, Sam," he said.

Sam glanced between Castiel and the brightly painted climbing arch, his eyebrows drawn together slightly as he considered the puzzle and then dismissed it—just one more thing that made sense to angels. The tall young man raked a hand through his brown hair. "Hey—sorry I'm late. I was at the library and I just got caught up in something…" Sam smiled with one side of his mouth. "You been waiting a long time?"

Castiel considered the bars once more. Then he turned fully and closed the distance between him and Sam, until he was looking up at his companion, studying each tanned line on that scarred, weathered face. Castiel gave a small smile.

"A very long time," he said simply. "But there are things worth waiting for."


End file.
